what do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
- george eliot
nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
when you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
- rumi
to me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.
- walt whitman
swoond projects in the works (click pics to link)
apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
- mark twain
tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
- mary oliver
my favorite thing is to go where i've never been.
- diane arbus
you've gotta own your own days and
name 'em, each one of 'em, every one of 'em, or else the years go right by and none of 'em belong to you.
- herb gardner,
a thousand clowns
doubt is not a pleasant condition,
but certainty is absurd.
- voltaire
the world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
- w. b. yeats
sounds travel through space long after their wave patterns have ceased to be detectable by the human ear: some cut right through the ionosphere and barrel on out into the cosmic heartland, while others bounce around, eventually being absorbed into the vibratory fields of earthly barriers, but in neither case does the energy succumb; it goes on forever - which is why we, each of us, should take pains to make sweet notes.
- tom robbins
enjoy your life. no curse hangs over you, nor did it ever. no devil chases after your soul. sing and dance and
be merry.
- christopher pike
...feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where we're holding back. they teach us to lean in when we feel we'd rather collapse and back away. they're like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we're stuck. this very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it's with us wherever we are.
- pema chodron
the relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.
- rollo may
we want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.
- margaret atwood
the same dream returned each night until i dared not to go to sleep and grew quite ill. i dreamed i had a child, and even in the dream i saw it was my life, and it was an idiot, and i ran away. but it always crept onto my lap again, clutched at my clothes. until i thought, if i could kiss it, whatever in it was my own, perhaps i could sleep. and i bent to its broken face, and it was horrible . . . but i kissed it. i think one must finally take one's life in one's arms.
- arthur miller, after the fall
i watched titanic when i got back home from the hospital, and cried. i knew that my IQ had been damaged.
- stephen king
they were nothing like the french people i had imagined. if anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgeable in the fields of plumbing and electricity.
- david sedaris
sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
- miles davis
to begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit.
- diane ackerman
life is too precious to waste on fast reading; i bet neruda says something like that in his memoirs, but i haven't gotten to that part yet.
- teju cole
sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears.
- pema chodron
b e a u t i m u s e
everybody needs beauty ... places to play and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
- john muir
have compassion for all beings,
rich and poor alike;
each has their suffering.
some suffer too much,
others too little.
- buddha
mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card i was dealt.
- kay redfield jamison
if there is one thing i've learned in thirty years as a psychotherapist, it is this: if you can let your experience happen, it will release its knots and unfold, leading to a deeper, more grounded experience of yourself.
no matter how painful or scary your feelings appear to be, your willingness to engage with them draws forth your essential strength.
- john welwood
experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. my God, do you learn.
- c. s. lewis
before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
- naomi shihab nye
confidence is ten percent hard work and ninety percent delusion.
- tina fey
our imagination flies; we are its shadow on the earth.
- vladimir nabokov
we must have the courage to allow a little disorder in our lives.
- ben weininger
one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
- carl jung
let me keep my mind on
what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still
and learning to be
astonished.
- mary oliver
to emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
- paul klee
meditate.
live purely. be quiet.
do your work with mastery.
like the moon, come out
from behind the clouds!
shine.
- buddha
secretly, i wanted to look like
jimi hendrix, but i could never
quite pull it off.
- bryan ferry
no, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.
- stephen king
it is in playing, and perhaps only in playing, that the child is free to be creative.
- d. w. winnicott
what a mess we are, i thought.
but this is where any hope of improvement begins -
acknowledging the mess.
- anne lamott
i think oprah expected me to cry or something. she asked me if i wanted a hug. i said, "get away from me, you loon. i'm english."
- lady sarah graham moon
choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability - and that way, you may change the world.
- charles eames
YIN AND JUNG
who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside, awakes.
everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.
when we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. we wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. but to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer.
- carl jung, the stages of life
the only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.
- eleanor roosevelt
the complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. i mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.
- alice munro
art is the highest form of hope.
- gerhard richter
life is not easy for any of us. but what of that? we must have perseverance and, above all, confidence in ourselves. we must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
- marie curie
in the matter of furnishing, i find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
- colette
love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
- sigmund freud
when you're arguing for an unpopular idea, there are three stages of truth: first, your opponents say it can't be true. next they say if it's true, it can't be very important. finally they say, well, we've known it all along.
- jonas salk
remember that you call on me today.
be near me, that i may remember you.
- shakespeare, julius caesar
you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
- spoken by atticus finch,
to kill a mockingbird
intense creative episodes are, in many instances, indistinguishable from hypomania.
- kay redfield jamison
here is the deepest secret
nobody knows.
here is the root of the root
and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky
of a tree called life;
which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide.
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart.
i carry your heart.
i carry it in my heart.
- e. e. cummings
every day, every day i hear
enough to fill
a year of nights with wondering.
- denise levertov
hope begins in the dark,
the stubborn hope
that if you just show up
and try to do the right thing,
the dawn will come.
you wait and watch and work:
you don't give up.
- anne lamott
i try to lead as ordinary a life as i can. you can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing.
- meryl streep
1 . 2 0 . 0 9
What a day.
What a country.
MLK 1 2 3
a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
- martin luther king, jr.
labor to keep alive in your breast
that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.
- george washington
if you hear a voice within you say
"you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
- vincent van gogh
certainly it's not just a visual experience - it's an emotional one.
in an informal way i have seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive to words and disoriented and out of it. i think
that recognition of visual art can be very deep.
- oliver sacks
temper zeal with human kindness.
- robert jackson
transcendentalese
i should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom i knew as well. unfortunately, i am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.
- henry david thoreau
if your ship doesn't come in,
swim out to it.
- jonathan winters
wished
i want to lead the victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter.
without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. this is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
- albert camus
poof
and above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
4 comments:
Fascinating images and quite horrifying in an interesting way.
these are incredible! These images are the modern day versions of illustrations from fairy tale books.
Wow - the second image is amazingly brilliant. Love it!
To quote Jane — wow!!! Beautiful images with a frisson of the macabre to make them truly interesting.
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